SafeAI, Siemens, and Obayashi collaborate to bring retrofitted autonomous, zero-emission heavy vehicles to off-road industries

By MEq June 14, 2022 21:52

Story Highlights

SafeAI
Siemens
Obayashi
vehicule grele autonome cu emisii zero
off-road
zero emission heavy vehicles
autonomous heavy vehicles
off-road heavy vehicles
autonomy
connected applications
Artificial Intelligence

SafeAI, a global leader in autonomous heavy equipment, announced a collaboration with Siemens today to create an autonomous, zero-emission heavy vehicle fleet for Obayashi Corporation. SafeAI and Siemens will work with Obayashi Corporation, a Japan-based global leader in construction, to create smarter, safer, more sustainable, and more productive construction sites.

SafeAI and Obayashi originally announced their partnership in October 2020, beginning with a pilot site in Cupertino, CA, USA. Together, the two companies set out to address common pain points across construction—including unsafe working conditions, labor shortages, and rampant inefficiencies—with autonomous solutions. Since then, they have successfully tested and deployed an articulated autonomous dump truck to complete over 580 load-haul-dump cycles.

SafeAI and Siemens signed an agreement in May 2021 to jointly work on retrofitting off-road heavy vehicles for autonomy, zero-emission, and connected applications, due to the increasing convergence of these three mega-trends in vehicles. SafeAI brings its powerful, scalable AI-powered retrofit autonomy to the collaboration, while Siemens provides its industry-leading hardware and software capabilities in zero-emission powertrains, and the necessary infrastructure to operate these vehicles.

Unlike passenger cars, full electrification of heavy vehicles is still at a nascent stage. However, with improving the maturity of technology, the total cost of ownership, government incentives, and regulations, there will be over four million zero-emission heavy vehicles deployed by 2030. Beyond the zero-emission benefit, electric vehicles also offer improved performance, negligible maintenance costs, and longer uptime and life, improving productivity and reliability while lowering costs. For this project, it is estimated that the total cost of ownership for the retrofitted electric vehicle will be 15-30% less than that of the original internal combustion engine vehicle.

The project also incorporates unique cutting-edge features from Siemens such as an autonomous-pantograph to enable automatic charging and an autonomy analytics suite to ensure a wide array of reliable and safe applications. Simulytic, a new Siemens AG venture, has been established to help accelerate the deployment of autonomous vehicles by offering a trustworthy platform accessible to regulators, government, insurance, tech developers, and operators alike. Andy Gill, Chief Operating Officer at Simulytics adds, “By creating a digital replica of the autonomous vehicle in its deployment environment, we can use our simulation technology to provide independent safety and performance analytics for both SafeAI and Obayashi.”

“We firmly believe the future of the construction industry is both autonomous and electric—and we’re determined to establish that future ourselves,” said Hiroto Sato, COO at Obayashi SVVL (Silicon Valley Ventures & Laboratory). “We’ve already started to see the powerful impact autonomous technology can have through our work with SafeAI over the last year. Now, with SafeAI’s partnership with Siemens, we will pioneer more sustainable operations to continue leading the way toward a smarter future for our industry.”